Lithuanian Radio and Television

NORVAIŠAS Petras, Vilnius

At about 2 a.m. on January 13, 1991 I was on Konarskio Street by the Radio and TV Center. The shooting had already started when I arrived with my friend. There was a fog hanging by the building that began to make our throats smart and our eyes tear.

There were explosions all around. Soldiers shot real bullets from their tommy guns.

I counted five armored vehicles. One vehicle in particular stuck in my mind. It was rigged up with loudspeakers from which they were making slanderous statements about Lithuania and talking about how the National Salvation Committee had taken power into their own hands. The soldiers were beating people not only with rubber sticks, but also with machine-gun butts. A man next to me had his head split open by a rubber stick and was taken to an ambulance.

The soldiers usually attacked whole groups, shouting like savages. In one such attack my left shin was injured by an explosive. I was given first aid in the hospital. There was a splinter stuck in my shin which I left at the reception room, on the doctor's request.

It was especially horrible when the lights went out. Then even more intensive shooting began. Tracer bullets were cutting the sky, packets were exploding, and people were screaming. I can confirm that those soldiers were under the influence of psychotropic drugs, as I am a practitioner at a prophylactic hospital and I've come across people under the influence of such drugs more than once.